


The Tear-Nourished Sea

by palmedfire



Category: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 19:58:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13038321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palmedfire/pseuds/palmedfire
Summary: The Luidaeg is older than old, and that weighs heavily upon her.  Especially when things are suddenly changing so fast.





	The Tear-Nourished Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elind/gifts).



They called her the Sea Witch, when they dared to call her anything at all. She was the Luidaeg, eldest daughter of Maeve, and they feared her. She was old, older than many of the divided courts even realized, and so tired of their petty politics, their endless squablings, their aggravating self-assurance. They fooled themselves into thinking they were the centers of the universe, never looking up long enough to not only realize they were not, but to realize the universe didn’t care about them in the slightest. She tried to echo that attitude. If she didn’t care about them, they couldn’t hurt her.

She’d been hurt too many times before.

She’d had children once, her beloved Roane, but they had been taken from her, murdered almost to the last, and she’d been forced to accept the children of their killers, the Selkie, as her own to protect what little was left of her bloodline. She’d had her heart broken by men, women, mortals, fae, and everything in between. She’d been hurt, betrayed and abandoned. It was easier to make them fear her. Safer to push them away. 

But it left her so alone. 

Alone with her burden of memories and secrets. All the things she could not say. Not just the things her geas forbid her speaking of, but all the things she’d done over the centuries. She’d placed iron in the hands of merlins, and opened the gates of fae strongholds to them. She’d sent heroes on quests she knew would doom them. Sometimes because she’d had to. Sometimes to just vent the anger and frustration that sometimes threatened to overwhelm her. Through it all, she was alone. 

With Liz she’d almost been able to believe she’d found someone, someone who could be both friend and lover, but that had been broken by the promise of a Selkie skin. On some level she’d known it would, eventually. The sea seemed destined to be her only true companion, and while it loved her, its love was not gentle, not soft and easy. It was a harsh love, full of abrasive salt and unexpected currents that even she could not always predict. It was not, could never be, a friend.

And then Toby had come along. Stupid, brave, foolish Toby, who had for some idiotic reason decided that the Luidaeg, the Sea Witch, eldest of the Firstborn, needed a friend. And had, in her typical, bullheaded way, somehow actually become that friend. At first, she’d tried to push Toby away, like she did everyone else. And then she’d tried to push Toby away because of who her mother was, because of the secrets of Toby’s bloodline that even the Sea Witch was not yet willing to face. 

But Toby had refused to be pushed away, and slowly, reluctantly, the Luidaeg had to admit she had warmed to the changeling. If nothing else, it was fascinating to watch as Toby managed to upturn and disrupt almost every aspect of fae society without even realizing she was doing it. The fae world changed slowly, if at all, and yet in the short four years since she’d been turned human again, she’d killed one of the Firstborn, deposed two rulers, and changed the very underpinnings of fae society. If nothing else, the Luidaeg allowed the friendship to continue just to have ringside seats to whatever Toby would do next.

It would be so easy, so _nice_ , to be able to just accept that friendship, to be amused and frustrated and flabbergasted in turns by whatever new crisis Toby found herself in. But she was the Sea Witch, and she could never escape what she knew. That wasn’t a part of her curse, but it was a burden all the same. The changes Toby had engendered so far were only the beginning—only the prologue for what was to come. And no one seemed to realize it. No one was putting the pieces together. Even now when not one, but two of Amandine’s line walked the Summerlands. 

Prophecies could only go unfulfilled for so long, after all, and surely some must be starting to think about what that meant. But no one was doing anything. No one was preparing. Except for her. What was coming would shatter everything, and this time, _this time_ the Sea Witch would not be caught unawares. Through Toby she would shape and shift what was coming. She would use Toby as the tool the changeling had been born to be. 

No one liked being used, and while Toby acknowledged that she was in debt to the Luidaeg, she still wouldn’t like being manipulated. Their friendship could very well shatter over it. But she was the Luidaeg, the Sea Witch, first of the Firstborn. Losing Toby’s friendship would hurt; it always hurt, and the centuries upon centuries didn’t make it any easier. But after everything else she’d lost, what was one friend? 

Maybe if she told herself that often enough it would be true.

So often, when she managed to make friendships or take lovers or make any sort of connection, she’d had to hide some or all of what she was. But Toby had burst into her life, without any sort of care for the "proper" way of doing things. Toby knew who she was, what she was. Even as they’d interacted more, as Toby had learned more, it had never scared her away. She’d even come to rely on the Luidaeg, not just for magical assistance (though that too, sometimes understandably, sometimes not), but for genuine emotional support. Sometimes, the Ludaeg had an almost overwhelming urge to grab Toby by the collar and shake her, screaming “Don’t you realize I’m the cursed Sea Witch, you fool?” until the idiot changeling girl’s brains rattled in her skull. And if she’d ever gotten even the briefest hint or whiff that Toby’s offers of friendship were somehow false or laced with ulterior motives, that would have been the least of what she would have done. But there was no deception, there was just… Toby. Honest, tactless Toby, taking in every new thing she learned about the Sea Witch and continuing to offer her friendship all the same. 

Losing Toby would hurt more than almost any other loss she’d suffered. And yet, even knowing that, she would do it when the time came, even as it broke her heart. What was one friendship weighed against the future of all Faerie?

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked my little peak into the mind of the Luidaeg! She's such a facinating character, and I always wish we could see more of her in the books. Then again, the problem with her is that she knows too much, and can't lie, so I understand why it's probably a good idea to keep the spotlight away from her.
> 
> Much thanks to rosefox for beta-ing


End file.
